Spicy Web Designer Interview with Russ Kirby

Russ Kirby is a web designer from Brighton, England in the United Kingdom. Instead of making the choice to go to university Russ decided to join a band and play guitar and he started designing for his band. He studied web design at home after the band broke up and it taught him the basics of web design and putting together a website. Since then his work has been evolving with every project he takes on and his attention to detail shows. His portfolio is not that extensive just yet but he continues to design with a strong work ethic, his ability to code standards compliant websites using XHTML and CSS and beginning to learn PHP. Russ studied his A-Levels in Art, Design and Photography at the Sussex Downs College and took a year of art foundations.

1. How did you get started in web design?

I was always wanted to be a designer right the way through school/college but decided to skip university as I played guitar in a band at the time and really wanted to give that a go. This was all happening around the time MySpace was making a big impact on the music scene so I started getting into trying to make a cool looking page for my band and I guess things just went from there.

2. When did you start designing websites?

Soon after my band split I decided to do a home learning course in web design which taught me the very basics about putting together a website. After I finished the course I started designing websites for anyone I could find just to get as much experience as possible and to start getting my portfolio together. This usually involved in building sites for free, but you have to start somewhere and there’s no easier way to learn web design than by doing it…lots!

3. What are the biggest challenges that you face in web design currently?

I suppose the biggest challenges I face as a web designer, are keeping my designs looking fresh and exciting, as well as trying to stay up to date with all the advances in technology that occur on pretty much a daily basis!

4. Do you code any of the web sites that you design currently? If so, what language(s) do you code in?

Yes I code all the sites I build in standards compliant XHTML/CSS. Most of the sites I have built recently have required a CMS so I occasionally have to do a bit of tinkering around with PHP although I wouldn’t ever claim to be an expert in server-side development. I’m not that smart!

5. I wanted to ask if and where you studied at college or university, what you studied and ask how has your education helped you become a better web design professional?  What other skills has it helped you to gain and what else has it taught you about design in general?

I studied Art, Design and Photography for my A-Levels at Sussex Downs College near where I live, then went on to do a further Art Foundation year to try and pin point which area of design I wanted to specialize in. This was back in 2001 so web design was not really covered in my course which was a bit of a shame, however, I do feel my Art Foundation year helped me a lot with how to tackle design problems, and got me thinking ‘outside the box’ which I used to have difficulty in doing.

6. What are your favorite tools to use when designing a web project? Why are they your favorite tools?

I start most of my web projects by mocking up designs in Illustrator. I find Illustrator easy to use and I can quickly get an idea whether a design is going to work or not. After I am pretty much happy with the initial design I start chopping it up in Photoshop and then hand code the XHTML and CSS in Dreamweaver using the code view. When I was teaching myself web design I used to code everything in Notepad as typing everything over and over again really made the languages stick in my head, but now to speed things up I just code in Dreamweaver.  Next comes the fun part of making sure all the browsers render my design consistently! One tool that has been a real godsend is Firebug which is a Firefox extension. Firebug can save you heaps of time when trying to identify a particular element in your code that is causing problems and I would really recommend adding it to your tool set.

7. You currently use Behance to host samples of your portfolio work.  How has that helped your freelance business and how do you feel this service benefits your business?

Although I have only recently joined the Behance network I have started getting a few leads just from having my profile on there. Also there is such a big community on the Behance network you can be sure that the right sort of people are getting to see your work. I am certain that being on Behance will continue to bring me leads and hopefully land me some great projects in the future.